Many of us have seen Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and his graphs that show temperature increases in recent years not seen since the last Ice Age, temperatures that are way above the more recent warming period that preceded the medieval (1600's-1800's) "little ice age."
So, to hear the UN chief bluntly saying that we must act now or face another such environmental upheaval as that seen in the 1600's or, god-forbid, the last major ice age, makes me sick to my stomach for my son's future....
Al Gore wasn't exaggerating when he visually proved our impending danger and neither was U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon when he spoke to power today:
"The situation is so desperately serious that any delay could push us past the tipping point, beyond which the ecological, financial and human costs would increase dramatically," Ban said in a speech to delegates.
"We are at a crossroad," he added. "One path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other to oblivion. The choice is clear."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
I just don't understand how Republicans could have risked their children's futures, mostly for political power and for a damn extra dollar of bloody oil money....
I just don't understand their logic.
I want to speak directly to the sane Republicans out there: there are other options for us to all save ourselves, democratic or republican, rich or poor, starting with sustainable technologies and ending with a hydrogen-based economy (according to Worldwatch Institute).
There are options.
So for the love of God and for the love of our children, please make this an issue this presidential campaign!
Some more light reading:
Researchers at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England, found that the flow of warm ocean currents toward northwest Europe has declined by 30 percent since the 1950s.
The research, to be published tomorrow in the journal Nature, is based on data collected in a great swath of the Atlantic between West Africa and Florida.
Led by oceanographer Harry Bryden, the team detected other key changes in the overall Atlantic circulation system.
For one thing, there appears to be a 50 percent reduction in the amount of cold, deep water flowing from the North Atlantic to the tropics, the team says.
Also, the researchers found a 50 percent increase in currents circulating within subtropical seas without reaching higher latitudes. More warm waters, that is, are staying put in the tropics.
The study supports computer model predictions suggesting that global warming will switch off the North Atlantic current in the next 50 to 100 years.
My bolding and italics.
So if things heat up faster than when that article was written in 2005, which is what has happened per recent studies, we could face this cataclysm anytime if the Atlantic "conveyor belt" snaps as in previous warming periods...
Here's how it works, same article:
Many scientists have predicted this effect. Global warming already appears to be injecting more fresh water into polar seas due to increased precipitation and the melting of the Greenland ice cap.
This freshening of the North Atlantic current makes its waters less dense—so they don't sink down to depths at which they would then be transported back south.
As result, the circulation stalls, with warmer water no longer being drawn north.
And incidentally...
Rising temperatures caused ice to melt in Greenland at a record rate this year, climate scientists reported Monday.
``The amount of ice lost by Greenland over the last year is the equivalent of two times all the ice in the Alps or a layer of water more than one-half-mile deep covering Washington, D.C.,'' said Konrad Steffen, an Arctic expert at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Greenland is about one-quarter as big as the continental United States, and 80 percent of it is covered by a massive ice sheet. It got its name because, from about A.D. 1000 to 1300, during the so-called ``Medieval Warm Period,'' it was warm enough to support forests and thriving colonies of Viking settlers.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...
American will have wasted 8 YEARS on this fight by putting George and Dick in the White House.
No wonder Republicans have historically withheld money from education: they want us as stupid as possible so that we will willingly kill ourselves off....